


fill my heart with song

by ChaiFighter



Series: kinder fates than these [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Fix-It, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Stormtrooper Culture, a love story in song, aka i try to explain the weird finnpoe dynamic in this movie, and then resolve it in a suitably romantic fashion, bonus: wholesome friendship content with rey, finn was the trooper but poe's the one with issues, like there's a mixtape involved, music as an expression of love, poe dameron plays guitar
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:00:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22322224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaiFighter/pseuds/ChaiFighter
Summary: Stormtrooper life didn't leave much room for music. Poe Dameron sets out to fix this. A love story in song.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Finn
Series: kinder fates than these [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1593445
Comments: 5
Kudos: 45
Collections: The Rise of Skywalker: Fix-It Fic Edition





	fill my heart with song

**Author's Note:**

> This is my attempt to give Finn and Poe's weird tension in TROS a thorough explanation, then resolve it properly. Music is the focal point because...reasons.
> 
> Starts 4 months post TLJ. Will run parallel to my [other fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21926116/chapters/52333165) once we reach post-TROS, but can stand completely alone.

The hardest part about a world outside the First Order, Finn thinks, blinking down at the page in front of him, is not the world itself, but the sheer _amount_ of it.

He’d known, logically, that trooper life was restrictive even compared to other areas of the First Order. Officers and techs, as far as he could tell, had significantly fewer regs on day to day behavior, and civilians generally didn’t have a concept of SOP at all. But somehow, while he’d known he was missing a lot, he’d never realized exactly how much _stuff_ there was to miss. 

“Why are the lines so short?” he asks, looking up from the Jedi tome in his hands. It seems a terrible waste of paper, all that blank space. Rey’s face falls. She’d clearly hoped he’d have some clue.

“I have no idea,” she says. “The text itself doesn’t make much sense with the rest of the book, either.”

Finn can’t help but agree. There’s a lot of talking about flowers and food, a whole chunk about smells, and exactly zero mentions of the Force. The whole thing feels weird, but he’s having a hard time pinning down how or why, and the one guess he has is too much too stupid to suggest out loud. 

Rey seems to see this on his face. “Poe?” she asks. 

“Poe,” Finn agrees. 

———

In the four months since Crait, the Resistance has moved bases three times. This would be much more difficult if the were more than forty people left in said Resistance to be moved. Finn tries not to think about it too much.

This month they’ve set up shop on Anoat, a skeleton of an urban metropolis almost completely barren of life. The entire planet had been gassed back in the Empire days, forcing the population to evacuate. The atmosphere has since reverted to breathability, but the empty city, seemingly untouched except for its total silence, is incredibly creepy. 

Finn almost hopes they’re discovered soon, if only to get away from the oppressive quiet.

Usually at this time of day Poe would be in the hangar bay (one of the advantages of camping in an abandoned city—they actually have a hangar bay), but he’d been on a solo run yesterday and managed to get himself, quote, ‘slightly shot,’ so instead he’s laid up in Medical and being a massive pain about it. 

“Hey guys,” he says brightly when they walk in. “Think you can tell the good Doctor I’m _fine to leave?”_

Doctor Kalonia, for her part, simply rolls her eyes and pats Poe on the shoulder. “You’ll be fine to leave when I say so, Dameron, and not a minute sooner.” Poe glares after her as she leaves the room, and Finn has to suppress a laugh.

“Hi Poe,” he says, sitting down in one of the chairs by Poe’s cot. “How are you feeling?”

“Gonna be honest,” says Poe, “I’m going a little stir crazy here. I really can’t afford to be on bedrest right now, I am _fine.”_

Just months ago, an injury like this wouldn’t have been a problem; a few hours with a bacta solution and Poe would be up and about as though nothing had happened. Now what bacta they have is held in careful reserve, topical application only. Poe’s going to need a few days at least to bounce back from this one. 

Still, Finn hopes that Kalonia clears him for minor duties soon. Aside from being right that they need him, Poe’s also got a minor case of the crazy eyes going on, and if he doesn’t get back to doing something he’s liable to start climbing the walls. 

“An inch to the right and that shot would probably have killed you,” says Rey, settling into her own chair and stealing several crackers off of Poe’s abandoned lunch tray. 

“Yeah,” Poe snips, “but it didn’t.”

“What a shame,” mutters Rey. She ignores Poe’s offended squawk, shoving the Jedi tome in his direction. “Here, read this. Do you know what any of it means?”

Poe skims the page, blinks, then starts over from the beginning, eyebrows climbing steadily higher. 

“Where did you get this?” 

“It’s one of the Jedi texts—”

Poe coughs and covers his mouth. His face says he’s trying hard not to laugh. Rey is looking more indignant by the second.

“What? What is it?”

“Hate to break it to you,” Poe wheezes, “but that’s not Jedi wisdom.” 

“What are you talking about? It’s right there, it’s in one of the old tomes.” Rey cranes her neck around to squint at the page as if she’ll suddenly see whatever she’s missed. 

“Oh, come on!” Poe turns to Finn for support, but Finn just shrugs. Poe looks back and forth between them, flailing his hands at the page. “It’s poetry! It’s terrible, thinly-veiled sex poetry!”

Huh.

So Finn’s guess hadn’t been so stupid after all. 

“Of course it’s not poetry, who writes poetry down?” says Rey.

“The Old Senate,” says Finn, peering at the book with new interest. He can’t believe _this_ of all things turned out to be true. “I guess it makes sense the Jedi would have kept some of their correspondence.”

Poe stares at them both, expression caught somewhere in between hilarity and dismay. 

“Okay,” he says, “backtrack. _What?”_

“I always thought Greener was messing with me,” says Finn. “The Old Republic Senate were really… you know?”

“Finn,” says Poe, “I really, really do not know.”

“It’s not poetry,” Rey insists. “No one puts poetry on paper.”

“We’ll get to that in a minute, Rey, but first, please. Finn. Tell me what the Old Republic Senate were.”

Finn coughs. “Do I really have to…”

_“Yes.”_

Oh for the love of… “Sex fiends,” Finn says, feeling his face flush. “There, happy?”

Now both Poe and Rey are staring at him. 

“Okay,” says Poe, dazed, “I’m going to need you to start from the beginning here.”

The story isn’t all that complicated; according to a fellow trooper (whose credibility is fading by the second), the Old Republic Senate was rife with scandals, mostly of the sexual variety. Senate lawmakers were so indolent and shameless that even their official correspondence was rife with innuendo. Specifically, they wrote each other terrible, thinly-veiled sex poetry, and lots of it.

“She said that was why we were never allowed to read Old Republic government documents,” Finn recalls. “They weren’t fit for respectable eyes.”

Poe’s shoulders shake with silent laughter so hard his eyes are beginning to well. “Oh my god,” he croaks. _“Respectable eyes.”_

“So I was right before? She was definitely messing with me?”

Poe dissolves into a another fit of choking giggles. Finn takes this as a yes. 

“Anyway,” he says loudly over Poe’s wheezing, “Rey, you were saying something before? About writing things down?”

Rey, who’s been grinning at Finn’s expense but thankfully hasn’t lost coherence, says, “We didn’t write poetry down on Jakku.” She shrugs, looking back down at the book in her lap; she’d taken it back from Poe sometime at the start of his fit. “I guess it’s just…different, in other places.” 

“But you had poetry?”

“Spoken, yes.” _The way it’s supposed to be_ , is implied.

It surprises Finn that they had poetry at all, even though it shouldn’t. If even stormtroopers had songs and stories, then he could hardly expect an entire planet of sentients to not have _something_. “So, what, you just memorized it? All of it?”

Rey frowns at him. Finn can’t help but feel there’s some significance he’s missing here.“If it’s good, you’ll remember it. If it’s not, it doesn’t deserve to be remembered anyway.”

Well, that’s a summary of life on Jakku if he’s ever heard it.

“This is garbage, though,” Rey says, glaring down at the book. “It shouldn’t be remembered at all, much less _written down._ ”

“Some student probably got bored of studying,” says Poe, who has thankfully brought himself somewhat under control. “See, it’s written in the back. I bet the pages were blank and they saw an opportunity.” 

He clears his throat and leans over Rey’s shoulder. Rey snaps the book shut. 

“Don’t dignify it with a reading!” she says. 

“No, wait,” says Poe. “Open it back to the same page.”

“I’m not going to let you—”

“No, I’m serious, I saw something, open it.”

Rey, brows thunderous with suspicion, obeys. Poe scans several lines, then dissolves back into laughter.

Finn rolls his eyes. “Oh, for—“

“It’s a song!” says Poe. “It’s not even just poetry, it’s a song!” He points near the bottom of the page, to a small block of seemingly random letters. “These are chord progressions, like for a guitar. This thing has a _tune.”_

Finn squints at the page. He’s only seen sheet music once in his life, but he remembers it having a lot more lines and dots. “How is that supposed to be music?”

Poe blinks.

“Oh,” he says, face going oddly soft. “Right. You didn’t exactly have music lessons in the First Order, did you.”

“Not really, no.” Finn thinks about it, then revises. “Well, actually, they did teach us to sing the anthem and a few other songs like it, but that’s it.”

Those memories were actually fond ones, as trooper memories go. It had been early on, before Finn and his age mates had started combat training in earnest. Once a week they would gather in one of the instruction halls, an officer would hand out flimsi sheets with the words, and an entire hour would be devoted to memorizing the song and putting it to the proper tune. The lessons had gone on for almost an entire year. Finn remembers wishing they’d never end. 

“Those were fun,” he says. “I like music.” 

“Buddy,” says Poe, a slow grin spreading over his face. “If you like music, I—”

Rey’s head jerks up a moment before a klaxon sounds, shattering their momentary peace. She shoves the book into her bag and is on her feet in an instant, Finn just behind her. 

“Shit,” he hisses. It’s only been two weeks since the last move, the shortest respite yet since Crait. They must have left behind more traces on Tah’Nuhna than they thought.

“He’s with them this time,” says Rey, glaring up through the ceiling as though she can see straight through it to Kylo Ren. 

“Just what we need,” says Poe bitterly. He swings his legs off the bed, grits his teeth, and stands. It seems he won’t be getting days to recover after all. “Rey, you’re on the ground. If Ren is here, we need you out where you can hold him off. Finn, run roundup, make sure everyone’s routed where they need to be, especially the new guys.”

“Here,” says Rey. She slings her staff off her back and holds it out to Poe. “Walk with this.”

“I’m fine.”

“Just take it, Poe,” she snaps.

Poe takes it.

“Where are you going?” Finn asks Poe as Rey departs. 

“Wherever I’m brought,” says Poe with a wry look out to the hallway. As if summoned, Lieutenant Connix swings around the doorframe, clearly having run all the way here.

“Commander, the General wants you.”

“On my way.” He claps Finn on the shoulder. “I’ll be fine, yeah? Go help the new kids.”

“Right,” says Finn helplessly. “Okay.”

They part ways in the hall, and Finn spares a second to watch Poe’s gait, awkward and dependent on Rey’s staff and Connix’s assistance to stay upright. Worry and fear fly up in his throat. Of all the times to be unable to run…

He forces himself to turn away. There’s no time for worry, he tells himself. You have a job to do. 

One of these days, he might even start believing it.

———

Aboard the Resistance’s single cruiser and safely jumped to hyperspace, Finn sags back against the nearest wall and closes his eyes. They were fortunate this time; the alarm had been sounded early, and they’d made it out miraculously unscathed, the only losses being a few stray scrap boxes and ration packs they missed in the loading process. 

How long can they keep this up? Their numbers are growing slowly but surely, but without more ships there’s not much they can actually do. They need a supplier, and soon.

It brings to mind Canto Bight and the war profiteers, the machine kept oiled by a stream of credits from Resistance and First Order alike. Finn’s jaw clenches, and he forcibly banishes the thought. It’s something to consider, but… not right now. That debate is a one for less desperate times.

Poe limps over to lean against the wall next to him. He is haggard and pale, clearly straining with the effort of staying upright. Rey’s staff is clutched in both hands, and it’s obvious that without it he would be sprawled across the floor. Still, he’s smiling.

“Well, buddy,” he says, cuffing Finn gently on the arm, “we’re alive!”

Finn smiles back despite himself. “We’re alive.”

There’s a stray lock of hair flopping sweatily over Poe’s forehead, and he’s somehow managed to get himself streaky with grease despite being relegated to organizational duties during the evacuation. Finn wishes he were surprised. Instead he just feels fond.

“Rey and Chewie got the Falcon out?” asks Poe. 

“Hit hyperspace about five seconds before we did,” Finn confirms. Poe’s shoulders loosen further. 

“Good,” he says, breathing out through his nose and tilting his head back. “That’s good. Mind if I just…”

Finn scrambles to catch him as he slumps, easing his slide to land gently on the floor. 

“Poe?”

“‘m fine,” he murmurs. “Really fuckin’ tired.”

“Yeah,” Finn sighs. “Me too.”

When he’s satisfied that Poe’s unconventional resting spot won’t aggravate his wound any more than the day’s events have already done, he settles on the floor beside him, legs folded. They sit quietly, watching various (alive!) Resistance personnel bustle about the cruiser. 

“Oh,” Poe exclaims several minutes later. “Right, I’ve got something to show you.” He shuffles around in his pockets and pulls out a data chip, a miniature reader, and what looks like a tangle of stray wires. 

“What are you…” Finn trails off, watching Poe untangle the wires and plug one end into the reader. 

“You, my friend, are in for a special treat known as ‘real music.’” Seemingly re-energized, he works the last knot loose with a triumphant “Ha!” and holds one end of the cord out to Finn. “Put this in your ear.” 

Finn obeys, albeit cautiously. He’s seen headsets like these around the base a few times, but he’d never gotten around to asking what they're for. There didn’t seem to be any apparatus for speaking into it, only for listening to incoming messages, which didn’t seem like a very practical setup. He supposes music is as good an explanation as any.

Poe feeds the data chip into the reader and thumbs his way through a limited menu, seemingly looking for something specific.

“There’s a whole lot of music out there,” he says conversationally, “which makes it a bit hard to find a starting point. Any requests? Your wish is my command.”

“I’m not even sure what the options are,” Finn says, ignoring the warmth that shoots through him at the phrasing. “Anything that’s not an imperial march is fine.”

“No worries there.” Poe fiddles with the reader a moment longer. “Okay,” he says at last. “I think I’ve got it. Ready?”

Oddly nervous, Finn nods. Poe presses play. 

Once, years ago, a trooper in Finn’s unit got their hands on a tiny pan flute. It was smaller than his palm, and its sound was so much softer than any of the First Order’s music reels that no one was sure whether it could be properly called an instrument. The opening strains of this music remind Finn of that little flute, so gentle that it feels like something from a different galaxy.

A woman’s voice croons:

_Moon river, wider than a mile  
_ _I'm crossing you in style someday  
_ _Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker  
_ _Wherever you're goin', I'm goin' your way_

One hand comes up to cup the headset. The other reaches out to grab Poe’s wrist. The sounds of the cruiser fade out, and Poe himself is nothing but a warm line against Finn’s left side, a warm weight under his hand.

Poetry with a tune, Finn thinks distantly. Good poetry. The kind that would be worth remembering. 

_Two drifters, off to see the world  
_ _There's such a lot of world to see  
_ _We're after the same rainbow's end, waitin' 'round the bend  
_ _My huckleberry friend, moon river, and me_

The music fades out, as gentle as it had begun. Finn hears a faint click as Poe presses a button on the reader. He feels…

He feels…

He turns to Poe, and finds Poe already looking at him.

Finn’s throat goes tight. Poe’s eyes are softer than Finn has ever seen them, and there’s a terrible raw honesty on his face—one Finn realizes is certainly reflected on his own. Poe’s wrist is still held loosely in Finn’s hand. 

“I—” Finn breaks off, tries again. “Poe, I—”

“Better than the anthem?”

A laugh punches out of Finn. “Yeah. Better than the anthem.” 

Poe gently twists his wrist out of Finn’s grip, and Finn lets him go, feeling oddly bereft. “What was that called?”

“Moon River. It’s an old one.”

“I like it.” There’s a strange warmth in his chest he doesn’t know what to do with. He swallows. “Thank you.”

Poe grins. “Don’t thank me yet. We’ve got a few hundred years of music to catch you up on. You’ll be sick of me by the time we’re done.” 

“Try me,” says Finn. He means it as a challenge, but the words come out too warm. A flash of… something steals across Poe’s face, and he turns back to the reader. 

“You’ll like this one,” he says, voice rough, and presses play. 

It’s a woman’s voice again, just as soft as the last song. Poe’s right; Finn does like this one. Beside him, Poe leans back with a sigh. Finn closes his eyes.

_Fly me to the moon  
_ _And let me play among the stars  
_ _Let me know what Spring is like  
_ _On Jupiter and Mars  
_ _I_ _n other words, hold my hand  
_ _In other words, darling, kiss me_

Halfway through the song Poe slumps a little, and when Finn looks over he finds him fast asleep. He doesn’t reach out and tilt Poe’s head towards his shoulder. 

He doesn’t stop it from landing there either.

_Fill my heart with song  
_ _And let me sing forever more  
_ _You are all I worship  
_ _All I long for and adore_  
_In other words, please be true  
_ _In other words, I love you_

**Author's Note:**

> [Moon River - Audrey Hepburn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5b0q3uVnaBM)
> 
> [Moon River - Bonus Daisy Ridley version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svhoyGL4sHA)
> 
> [Fly Me to the Moon - The Macarons Project](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hd0XraYQRR0)
> 
> Next chapter should be out within a week, barring complications. In the meantime, check out this fic's [reylo sibling](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21926116/chapters/52333165), chat with me on [tumblr](https://chaifighter.tumblr.com/), or drop me a song rec in the comments. If it fits the vibe, it might get used in the story.


End file.
